Sixteen Going on Seventeen
by thestarswillwhisper
Summary: The problem with growing up, of course, is that sometimes along the way people grow apart from the ones they love. / But other times growing apart from one person means growing towards someone else. Riarkle fluff, twoshot.
1. Chapter 1

It is the night before her sixteenth birthday, almost ten years after Farkle first met her. Riley's shoes squeak as she clambers up a yellow slide, her dark hair swinging, and when she turns her head to grin at him from the top she is all long legs and wide eyes glinting in the near-darkness. Somewhere in the city, a siren's wail cuts through the warm late-June air. She is almost a midnight baby, and it is almost midnight, he's keeping track. Maya's nose wrinkles as she laughs at a joke Lucas cracked; they are perched beside each other at the very top of the playground structure and Farkle is chuckling along with the other two when his watch beeps 12:02 am.

"Happy Birthday!" he calls. Maya whoops and hops off the railing she was sitting on with a swing of her legs, ripping open the six-pack of cream soda by the top of the slide.

"Ba-doo doo doo da doo doo doo do" she scats, then dons a voice that reminds Farkle of those old black-and-white TV commercials from the 60s: "Congratulations, Miss Riiiiley Matthews, you have been alive on this insane planet for sixteen insane years! Press one to claim your prize." Riley beams.

"ONE!" She yells out, a sound of pure joy. Maya reaches over to give her a can first before tossing one each to the boys. Farkle watches his friends from below, marveling at how close he feels to them and how right this moment feels; at the same time, he's always believed everything good comes to an end eventually. He fumbles his can when it hits his hands, but doesn't let it drop.

"Welcome to the club, Riles," Lucas laughs, and Maya whoops again. They all pop the tabs and drink, except for Farkle. He hesitates, everything he knows about the concoction of chemicals and carcinogens contained in the bubbly pink soda running through his mind and weighing his mouth closed. But a moment later he downs it anyway, carbon bubbles popping on his tongue upon contact like tiny fireworks, because it is Riley's birthday and her happiness is important to him.

When the four of them make their individual ways home half an hour later, they promise to meet up for ice cream the next day. That is one of the last truly good nights for a long time. And even then, they are beginning to spiral apart, imperceptible fracture lines snaking through the landscape of their friendship, thin as threads.

The only difference is, they haven't realized it yet.

The problem with growing up, of course, is that sometimes along the way people grow apart from the ones they love. Even if their pasts are intertwined like the roots of trees planted too close together, their paths inevitably begin to branch out in different directions. This must've been what happened because in September when school comes back into session, something is already unmistakably different.

Farkle can't place it at first, because it's little things that begin to tug them apart: Lucas and Riley have no classes together, so when he's home sick for a week in November she only finds out the day before he gets back. Maya's spirited banter with Lucas begins to taper off, until one day he calls her a short stack and she hardly responds, just shrugs a little and glances away. There are times when she seems distant, untouchable; sometimes he catches Riley looking in her direction, eyes filled with worry and confusion. The weeks go on, and as they settle back into the familiar rhythm of high school, their group doesn't find as much time for each other as they used to. He often misses middle school, when all their classes were the same and they went everywhere together—now, some days, they are limited to quick hallway exchanges:

"Junior year is nothing like in the movies," Lucas grumbles to him one day as they pass each other in the Science wing. "I thought by now I'd be quarterback of the football team or something, but our school hasn't even got one 'cause freaking Manhattan's too urban for football fields."

Or another day, when somehow all four of them end up at Riley's locker between first and second period:

"You guys wanna come over today?" Farkle invites, tired of the distance. He misses when it was normal for them to all burst out laughing at the same time over jokes nobody outside their tight-knit circle would understand. He remembers when they used to spend hours listening to each other's heartaches and worries, and how those hours would feel like mere seconds after they were over.

"Can't, got a big game in Brooklyn," Lucas responds. When did they all stop going to his basketball games? Lucas spends more and more time with the jocks, and Farkle can't tell if Riley and Maya are noticing the same way he is, because, being Farkle, he can't help but notice everything all the time.

"I've got to study for this huge thing, sorry," Maya rakes a hand through her newly-cropped hair. Her blond waves barely brush her shoulders, and it makes her look different, but also older, he thinks.

There's a pause.

"Maya," Riley begins, clearly planning to make a frustrated objection of some sort. Maya doesn't study, doesn't do much schoolwork at all except for when advanced art class is involved. But then the bell rings before she can finish her sentence and they scatter without another word. That seems to be happening a lot, and so the next few months pass that way.

* * *

When he hears her voice on the intercom, he knows something is wrong. A few minutes later she lets herself into his room, hair dripping because she is Riley and sometimes she forgets to take an umbrella with her; unfazed, he grabs a clean towel from his bathroom and tosses it to her, and while she peels her jacket off she begins to choke out the story.

It's because of a boy, the older one Maya's been disappearing away with for hours on end since Christmas, the one whom her friends rarely ever see and have never formally met. Every time someone tries to bring him up, she brushes it off; if they press on, she finds a reason to leave. She won't even tell them his name.

"I went to see her because she's never around anymore and she won't talk to me like she used to, but she just stood there in the door and kept saying she was busy. She wouldn't even let me come in. And then she went to close the door and her shirt slipped a little off her shoulder, and there were," Riley's breath hitches, "there was a big purple bruise, right there. And it was probably _him,_ because who else would do that to my Peaches?" She sits down beside Farkle at the foot of his bed, toweling her hair off.

He thinks back to the last time he and Maya talked, really talked, about a week and a half ago. He could feel her drifting, changing, and it scared him. He'd always known how broken she felt inside, but sometime during the past few months it became the way she defined herself. It didn't used to be that way when they were all still close and she had Riley's innocent joy and unconditional love to balance her out.

 _Around him, I don't feel like I'll never be enough. He's screwed up inside, just like me. You and Lucas and Riles… I had fun with you, but none of you get what it's like to be me. You're all bright and shiny and happy, the three of you, and I don't belong. You don't even know who I am anymore,_ she accused. _But he does. He knows me._ When he tried to disagree, she cut him off: _Don't, please. This is hard enough already. We're both better off this way and you know it._ The words still sting, and he finds himself glad that Riley wasn't around at that very moment. It had been like talking to a stranger, and that was why, when Maya slammed her locker door so hard it rattled and disappeared around the corner, he found himself letting her go.

"What did you do?" he asks.

"As soon as she knew I saw the bruise, she just said that she really had to go and I should just leave her alone and stop bothering her. I was going to stay there until she changed her mind because, Maya and I, we don't give up on each other, you know? But she's never kept me waiting this long before… and I'm so tired of this, Farkle. I can't hold on to her when she's made it clear she doesn't want me around anymore. She keeps on shutting me out and pushing me away, and all I want is my best friend back. I miss her so much, I don't know if it'll ever stop hurting.

"So I stood there and I waited, and I waited, and I waited some more. I almost left, but then I told her I wasn't going anywhere unless she talked to me, and she just looked right through me until she shook her head and muttered something I couldn't hear and then—" her voice grows small, and her hands fall into her lap. It takes him a moment, but he pieces together what happened next.

"And then she shut the door in your face and wouldn't open it when you still refused to go away, so after a while you got back on the subway and came here," he finishes for her. She nods, and he notices the tears rolling down her face and dripping off her chin. In the quiet that follows, he thinks he can hear her heart breaking.

Sorry," she finally says, wiping her face with her sleeve and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "I didn't know where else to go. I can't go home like this, because my parents will ask and I can't tell them about... you know. And you've always been here, even when I didn't know I needed you."

He doesn't know what to say at that. He never knew she noticed him.

So he wraps an arm around her and pulls her close, like he's seen Maya do so many times before. She rests her cold cheek on his shoulder and sighs deeply, smelling of crisp rain and February; it must be below zero outside and he is reminded of heat transfer. Thermal conduction, he thinks: heat's spontaneous flow from a warm body to a cold body at contact. He's just as worried about Maya as she is, but right now it's Riley who has stopped shivering, whose breathing he can feel against his chest as it calms. It's her whose every movement he is acutely aware of, even as he reminds himself that this is just Riley Matthews, who he's known since forever. Who clings to thoughts of sunshine and rainbows especially during the worst of storms, who almost drowned the first time she went apple bobbing. His best friend. He tightens his arm around her and thinks he sees her smile out of the corner of his eye.

They sit there for a while; at some point, the flow of rain down Farkle's windows slows to a trickle.

A few blocks uptown leaning against a thick, solid tree trunk somewhere in Central Park, Maya gingerly takes a lit joint from a tall boy with chapped lips and dark eyes- her first smoke, but it's about damn time, she mutters to him—and takes a long drag, fighting hard to keep from coughing it up as the smoke invades her lungs. Then she takes another. Soon, her head begins to buzz pleasantly, and she begins to feel as if she's floating away. She must be floating away, floating away, away.

 **A/N- Part II coming soon. Shoot me a review if you enjoyed this, I'd really appreciate it!**

 **x**


	2. Chapter 2

Riley begins spending more time with him after that, probably as a side-effect of Maya's perpetual absence. Riley seems irrevocably lost without her, and he wants so badly to make her feel better, to take her mind off the loss of her best friend. But as much as he wishes he could, he doesn't know how to fix things between her and Maya, so he settles for spending afternoons after school with her and making her laugh as many times a day as he can. It's all he knows to do. Most days, they like to study at her place, textbooks and snacks spread out on the rug, and if they're lucky Lucas shows up, too—but less and less often. When they pass him in the hallways he's laughing with other people now, but he still spares them a quick wave if they happen to catch his eye.

"Farkle, look at this," Riley sighs, sliding her phone over to him so he can see a 8-second clip of Lucas making out with some girl—a freshman, Farkle thinks, who's got one arm up to film the whole thing and the other thrown around Lucas's neck. Farkle makes a face. "Yeah, I know," she groans, widening her eyes in mock horror. "But I mean, he seems happy… I just want Lucas to be happy."

"I know, Riles. I know," he says, passing the phone back. As she takes it and turns back to her trigonometry, a sad little smile plays at the corners of her lips.

Other days, they turn out the lights and sit at Farkle's windows to watch the city pulsing with life beneath them, because it endlessly fascinates her and he loves that. It gets dark early in the city this time of year, and the city lights blink to life like a million promises—Riley's words, not his. This is what they are doing when it happens.

In Manhattan's glow, her fingertips brush the back of his hand all soft, and the shock causes him lose sight of the airplane his eyes have been tracking through the sky for a full minute. But he's afraid to look at her because he's uncertain of what he just felt, and his heart is beginning to beat faster in his chest as thoughts stream through his mind—she was sitting too far earlier to reach him, so she must have moved closer, so if he really felt what he thought he felt it must've been intentional on her part, which must mean what's coming next is-

And then she takes his hand, curling tentative fingers between his. He stills.

"Riley?" he whispers, without turning.

"Hi." A pause. "Is this okay?"

He blinks and looks at her. Her eyes have gone wide as if she's surprised herself and he briefly recalls a night not too long ago, when there were four friends waiting for midnight at a playground, before everything started to fracture.

"Farkle?" she asks. He shakes his head, forgets what he was thinking about. Squeezes her hand.

"Why wouldn't it be okay? I've always loved you, you know that, right?" It's true. He used to tell her all the time that he was in love with both her and Maya, and he meant it with his whole heart every time. But the moment that thought crosses his mind, he frowns, because the way he feels about her is different now than it was back then. He used to idolize her, adore her, and… that's not what this is about anymore. He feels his expression soften as he glances at her, waiting for her reply.

"I guess I never really paid attention to you until this year. I was so wrapped up in myself and who I thought I needed that I took you for granted, even though my entire life you've been a better friend to me than I've been for you," she haltingly admits. He's lost for words—she seems to have that effect on him lately- so he turns back to the glass with a quiet smile resting on his face and finds another airplane for his eyes to follow. She breathes out a sigh. Five minutes pass until her soft, bright voice tears him away from the skyline again.

"Funny that it took everybody else leaving to make me realize how important you are to me. I mean, I thought Maya and I were forever, you know? And now…"

His reply is the answer to her unspoken question, hanging in the air between them. "Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere." He squeezes her hand again and she squeezes back, and he swears he has never felt so at home with anyone before. He's always been the odd one out, the know-it-all; the discomfort of not belonging has shadowed him his entire life. But somehow, in this moment, all of that hardly seems real anymore: the world has faded away, leaving only him and Riley with their favorite city skyline laid out in front of them like a photograph brought to life. They sit like that, unmoving, together, watching their city from above until her parents call to tell her it's late and she should be getting home. Typical of her, she goes without a complaint, but not before throwing her arms around his neck again.

"Thanks, Farkle," she whispers, breath warm against his skin. And then she's out the door.

* * *

It is the night before her seventeenth birthday, and tomorrow night she'll sit at dinner surrounded by her family so he takes her out to her favorite taco place uptown for an early celebration of their own. Afterwards, they opt for the long way home, winding their way through the city's brightly-lit, busy streets and stopping by a few places that capture her interest. It's late and they are still far from home by the time they skirt the lower half of Central Park, turning onto a row of brownstones.

As they walk side by side, he happens to glance at her the moment she hears the faint music drifting from one of the houses at the far end of the street. With most people, when something unexpected makes them happy their faces light up; with Riley, everything sparks with joy- from the tips of her fingers all the way to her eyebrows. In an instant, she is dragging him by the hand towards the melody, and he is running without ever having meant to. As they draw closer, he picks out the sound of a trumpet, warbling wistfully—he is trying to place the song when, panting, she slows to a stop in the golden glow of a streetlamp, then abruptly pivots to face him.

"Dance with me," she begs. He hesitates – he's no dancer. She must sense his apprehension because she tugs at his hand and adds, "It's just me, Farkle. I'm so clumsy I trip on flat ground and when I get too excited my arms swing around and whack people entirely of their own accord; what's there to be afraid of?"

As he obliges, he's smiling because she's right. And it's awkward at first, because they are both unsure and self-conscious, but eventually they grow comfortable and he forgets himself. It's a slow song, an old one that he's pretty sure is meant to be romantic, but neither of them has much of a sense of rhythm so it hardly makes a difference. He learns that every time he twirls her, she giggles, and so he twirls her again and again until they're both breathless with laughter. His cheeks are aching when she pulls him close and he realizes that they must've been there for a while, because the music is no longer playing and the sounds of the city have filled the street again without him noticing.

Funny how that happens. He's the type of person who doesn't tend to let anything escape his attention, but somehow when his mind is occupied with her everything else becomes background noise. How could he be thinking about anything in this moment other than the way her arms are wrapped around his neck? His hands rest on her lower back; he's certain if he leans in their noses will touch.

They are swaying side to side in some strange sort of slow dance and he wonders what she is thinking; with anyone else he would be talking to fill the silence but this kind of quiet only makes him feel closer to her. All he can smell is the faint scent of strawberry shampoo as he considers lifting his right hand to brush her hair back. It's covering the necklace that was his early birthday gift to her and it makes him giddy to see the little golden sun pendant resting in the dip of her collarbone; it's like witnessing his very own miracle, it never gets old.

Before he can move, a beep from his watch signals the beginning of her birthday. It startles him; he didn't think they'd been out so long.

"Happy seventeenth, Riley," he murmurs. A smile spreads across her face. He's almost sure he meant to say something else, but then all the thoughts running through his head evaporate, because she has risen to her tiptoes and is gently pulling on his neck so that he tilts his face downwards. It happens so fast he forgets to breathe, and the last thing he sees before he closes his eyes to kiss her for the first time are her eyes as they widen, deep brown and glowing with lamplight. In them, he sees the briefest flash of his face reflected back at him, and the thought crosses his mind that the person he is in her eyes is a better version of himself than he could've ever imagined. He hopes maybe the same is true for her.

In the seconds that follow, like a pair of stars spinning closer and closer together, they succumb to the inevitable force pulling them near. It's as natural and irresistible as gravity. They collide, slowly at first and then softly again and again until he is dizzy with her, with the way he can feel her smile against his lips as if she can't contain her joy.

* * *

The next day, she asks him out. They don't tell anyone, but somehow people know just by seeing them together- maybe it's something in the way he looks at her with eyes full of newfound wonder, or the way she glows when she's near him. It still hurts that their friends aren't here for this, and he's not sure if he'll ever stop wondering why they grew apart. He knows she feels the same way; it hangs between them sometimes, this unspoken sense of loss that somehow makes him feel even closer to her. They're the only people he wants to tell about these precious moments when he falls for her all over again, during the first few months where everything feels new and exciting and they wander the streets of their hometown hand in hand. Even after that, when they begin to settle into a new, comfortable rhythm of familiarity, everything he feels for her only seems to grow.

She is the most fascinating person alive, he's sure of it. Every day he discovers new layers and facets of her that he never knew could exist, and in turn, she reveals to him the brightest, softest parts of his own heart. After a day spent wandering the city hand in hand, he relives his favorite memories of her on the walk back to his building; even after he kicks off his shoes and flops into bed her grin is still seared on his heart. He stares at the ceiling in the dark and marvels at the way they click, at the way she could do anything and he would still feel the same way about her. Even on her bad days, even the afternoon they have their first fight and they both end up crying, all he has to do is look at her and his heart feels like it's going to spill over with emotion, because what they have matters to him so much.

He never believed in forever before this. Sound reason always told him it was scientifically impossible, not to mention irrelevant because of the fleeting length of the human life. To him, forever used to represent a concept too enormous for the mind to grasp, let alone experience. But now, the way Riley laughs at the strangest things and believes the best about absolutely everything time and time again fills him with something that says otherwise.

One quiet night, he is alone on the elevator down from her apartment when he decides that, maybe, you know what the best kind of forever must be like when you spend a day drifting in and out of comfortable silence with the person you feel closest to in the world.

Because sometimes friendships end, and you turn around to find that suddenly people you thought you knew better than the back of your hand have become strangers. But if she has taught him anything it's to keep trusting in the good in the world, in other people and, above all, in the soul that is Riley Matthews. He never thought something so inexplicably beautiful could come from so much fracture and drift, but somehow that is exactly what has grown between them- like a cluster of yellow flowers bursting from a crack in the sidewalk- ordinary, yes, but filled with light.

 **A/N Hope you enjoyed! Maybe I'll write some more in the future if yall would be down to read. Reviews are greatly appreciated so post me one if you liked this, thanks!**

 **x**


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